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How open data can change the way we live and learn

"When data are shared broadly a kind of collaboration and productivity occurs that wouldn’t be possible if everyone was sequestering their own data.”

Different startups and goups, including Civic Tech, have opened up the discussion on sharing data with others. More tools are being developed by hobbyists and "civic hackers" who want ot get involved in the technology behind data sharing. Civic Tech's Hendrik Bechmann, right, discusses Toronto budget data. (Steve Russell / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Picture for a moment every person, every streetlight, every store in every shopping mall, perched atop a mountain. The bank machines, the ambulances whizzing by, the university lecture halls. Underneath it all, individual piles of raw information are forming, fed by the likes of wearable devices that track every step, dollar and friend request.

Now imagine those individual data mountains swept up into one pile of information for cross-referencing, researching and accelerating our collective knowledge into the next realm.

“There’s an avalanche of data that can help unlock a lot of important questions,” says Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist and health-care researcher at Yale University.

“There’s lots of evidence in other fields that when data are shared broadly a kind of collaboration and productivity occurs that wouldn’t be possible if everyone was sequestering their own data.”

He’s started breaking down those barriers in the health-care field.

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One project, a startup called Hugo, imagines a world where the individuals who generate information, from Fitbit data to insurance records, can own and access it for whatever they like. Another, Yale University Open Data Access (YODA) project, aims to share clinical research data, positing that the data produced in research, barring privacy concerns, should be available.

“We need to be able to forge towards a more open science culture and move away from a culture where it’s been discretionary to publish the results and virtually never share the raw data that was produced,” he said.

Commercial entities are harnessing the power, he said, creating tools such as Amazon’s patented “anticipatory shipping” method, which can send out packages before they’ve been ordered.

“For the purpose of selling you things, people are using an extraordinary amount of data in sophisticated ways,” says Krumholz.

Now, he says, it’s time to flip the balance of power and make data a tool for public good.

But data is a highly prized commodity in the private sector, meaning information is unlikely to flow freely any time soon.

For Kontokosta, the data being generated across cities can help understand how urban design and the built environment affects people’s health.

“Think of all the data that Google is collecting, or Facebook, or data that an Uber has about transportation patterns across the city,” he said.

There is one sector that has started flinging open its electronic filing cabinets: government. Seven years ago, Toronto launched an open data portal, becoming one of the first governments in Canada to do so.

In the hands of hobbyists, non-profits and civic workers, the data turns from cells on a spreadsheet into the building blocks for a more responsive city. Existing applications, from public transit trackers to health inspection databases, could give way to shelter-bed finders and mobile notifications for nearby development proposals, as more data opens and more enthusiasts build tools around it.

As the wait continues for more data to be released, the tools required to crunch the numbers are speeding up.

“We have computing capability now to be able to analyze (data) in seconds rather than in months or years, as it might have been even just a few years ago,” Kontokosta said.

But merging disparate data still presents computational and practical challenges, he said. Try comparing, for example, air quality data to street tree locations or matching sound data with census information. “And then just very practical problems of having a consistent identifier for what is an address or what is a building,” he said. “You’d be surprised how vague that can still be.”

It’s no surprise to Tracey Lauriault, an assistant professor of critical media and big data at Carleton University. “It’s almost as if we ran ahead with an innovation and we didn’t stop to think for a second what it might imply,” she said.

The unbridled enthusiasm of “amateur entrepreneurs” must face the sobering task of standardizing the information, she says, to allow for easier searching, categorizing, discovery and comparison. “I fully support any kind of initiative that’s trying to open these things up and make them available, but now it’s time for us to have a second sober thought,” she said.

For Kontokosta, applying standards and solving computational problems can unlock the next level of utility.

“The real insight is when you’re able put these data sets together and ask questions of them that people before have not been able to ask.”

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